Some fellow Christians can be embarrassing

By GENE SHELBURNE

Published 5:53 am, Thursday, February 27, 2014

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As an outsider looking in, I wonder. Are Catholics all over the globe embarrassed when one of their highly touted bishops gets exposed on the front page of the morning newspaper as a pedophile? Or when the Vatican treasurer turns out to be a fellow you can’t trust?

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not throwing rocks at my Catholic friends. In fact, when I read news reports like these, I hurt for them. Such scandals must leave loyal believers deeply conflicted.

I wonder. Do moderate Muslims want to take down their mosque sign when they watch the World Trade Center crumble? Do headlines about innocent grandmothers and toddlers blown to bits by body bombers cause civilized Muslims to hide their faces in shame?

How do the sensible members of any faith group respond when a mindless zealot or an immoral deceiver in their ranks emerges on center stage in the public eye?

I know how I felt when I first learned on the Internet that some fellow who opposed abortion committed in the name of Christ the egregiously un-Christlike act of murdering a prominent abortion doctor in Atlanta. I was horrified. Astounded. Sick at heart.

I know how I feel when I read that the headline-grabbing members of the Westboro Baptist Church are planning to picket the funeral of another fallen soldier. When these radicals in Topeka, Kan., pose as spokesmen for all of us who honor Jesus and start regurgitating lists of all the people God hates, I feel violated.

Maybe I underestimate our non-Christian neighbors, but I doubt that a lot of them can tell the difference in the hate-spewing Westboro protesters and the rest of us who wear the name of Christ.

If you think I am worrying about nothing, google the name of that Kansas church and check out how our secular friends perceive them (and us).

If you think I’m crying Wolf, consider for a moment how much you differentiate between mild Muslims and murderous Muslims when you see news clips of the Benghazi attack or the Libyan embassy bombing? At gut level we tend to lump all Muslims together, don’t we?

While Jesus warns us not to parade our piety — not to practice our religion “to be seen by men,” still he tells us to let our lights shine for him. When our neighbors watch us, what will they conclude about Jesus. That he stands for hate and anger and condemnation? Or that he stands for truth and peace and holiness and love?